


have they not built towers of our bones?

by Ias



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Established Relationship, Foreshadowing, M/M, Omens & Portents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5158037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Already the dream is fading. He pushes it away faster, brushes its remainder from his mind. The weight and warmth before him is an anchor: <i>This is Annatar. He does not belong to your darkness. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	have they not built towers of our bones?

**Author's Note:**

> So [Iza](http://piyo-13.tumblr.com) made [this awesome piece of Sauron fanart](http://piyo13sdoodles.tumblr.com/post/132519102246/lol-im-like-a-week-and-a-half-late-or-some-shit) and my hand kind of slipped. On the plus side this is probably the happiest fic for this pairing I've written yet! Which, to be fair, is not saying much.

The hallway stretches out before him like an open throat. There are no doors, no windows—the stone is rough-hewn, dark, and presses inwards on Celebrimbor with the vast weight of earth above him. There is no light, and yet he can see. The shadows are cold and blue as his feet silently pad across the gently sloping floor, yet paradoxically it is heat that comes pouring from the walls and the stone. There is a smell in the air like burning hair, like melting metal, like copper or blood tanging on his tongue.

He doesn’t know how he got here, or why he is walking. He should be in his chamber in Ost-in-Edhil, in his bed, with—a blank spot appears in his mind where a name should be, a name he knows he remembers. Why can he not think of it? These questions do not slow the steady, automatic motions of his feet, driving him deeper and deeper into the earth like the mechanical march of a wind-up toy.

Part of him wants to turn around, to try and glimpse the source of the light that follows him, never growing lighter or dimmer or wavering as if a flame—it could almost be moonlight, but he’s too far underground for that. Yet he knows, somewhere deep inside him, that if he were to turn, if he were to crane his head furtively over his shoulder, that there would be no moon, no light at all—only a wall of thick, cloying darkness, inches from his face. And then perhaps there would be no more light anywhere, for him.

“You should have listened to me.” The voice comes at his ear, soft and deep, from somewhere just behind him. Galadriel speaks as she always does, laden with wisdom and pride in equal measure. Once Celebrimbor took her counsel to heart; but no longer.  

“I made my choice,” he says, and means it as a retort—but the words smack of something fatal on his tongue, the taste of ash, of burning. What has he chosen? He cannot remember. Only that it is golden where Galadriel is steel, a warm draft of spring to the chill of the Helcaraxë still clinging to Galadriel’s robes. Celebrimbor can hear her feet gliding over the stones just behind him. He knows without looking that she is bearing their small light aloft, casting its moonlight glow on the dark path ahead.

He frowns, tries to grasp the core of the issue—he wants to argue with her, to explain his reasons, but they dance away from him like shadows thrown by a dying fire. “Things are going to be better,” he begins, struggling. “We were—there was something… We can make Middle-earth beautiful once more… That is our duty. Our fate.”

Galadriel laughs, and the sound is like the hollow cracking of ice under a sky lit only by stars. It sounds nothing like her laugh at all, in fact. “Fate?” the voice says, mocking. “I will speak to you of fate. I see you raised up high on over a field of iron flowers, with three fires driven in your breast. If it is the light and glory of Valinor you love so dear, you will behold its reflection one more before the end.”

The words strike him like physical things—it seems for one moment that he can feel something lodged in his chest, that if he were to let his head fall forward he would see the fletching of three black arrows plunged into his skin. Burning. “What are you saying?” Celebrimbor asks, unease lurching up in his chest. There is no sound from behind him. “Galadriel?” The name echoes on the rock walls before him, a lonely sound. But he is not alone—the dusty scrape of footsteps continues at his back. The heat rolls off the stone in thick, syrupy waves, plastering itself over Celebrimbor’s skin like the hot wet breath of some hungry animal. At once the person at his back does not seem like Galadriel at all.

He wants to turn around, to catch just once glimpse—but he cannot, he cannot, that is the one thing he cannot do. He walks on, the back of his neck prickling despite the heat, listening to the shuffling footsteps that follow only a few paces behind. The walls roar like a furnace. He’s in an oven, cooked alive. But still he walks on, followed or guided or driven, because there is nowhere to go but to the end.

And then, of course, the door.

At first it seems only that the pale corpse-light has gone no further, that the shadows waiting just beyond its reach have grown tired of waiting and are creeping forward. Celebrimbor stops—again, that strange lack of fear that in itself is worse than fear, the suspicion that true terror is waiting just beyond. But the patch of living darkness comes no closer until he takes another step—and by then he can make out the faint carvings, the shine of light from the handle. The door is made of wood so dark and polished it gleams like obsidian. Celebrimbor settles his hand on the wood and for the first time feels the cold. It feels slick beneath his fingers, chilly and unwholesome as dead skin.

Celebrimbor pulls his hand back. At once, he realizes that he very much does not want to open this door. And yet he cannot turn around, for he can feel that presence at his back even now, silent, waiting in the darkness. And the darkness is growing, is creeping up like mold, held back only by a light which grows dimmer and dimmer by the instant.

He freezes, the knowledge driving into him with icy certainty. _The light is fading_. He can linger no longer—he knows that if the light goes out he will be lost, devoured, extinguished by the darkness so dense it’s a physical thing, right there, coming closer, closer. The handle of the door is little more than a silvery glint in the dark. Celebrimbor grasps it, and pushes it open.

There is light here, now. He is meant to see. The room stretches out, stretches up, its walls sloping upwards towards a vaulted roof Celebrimbor can only assume is there—the pillars slide into darkness impossibly high above, as if the room has swallowed a starless sky. It seems the room has been constructed from rounded stones, uneven and unlovely and pitted with shadow. Everything is grey and black, as motionless as an indistinct image scratched into a plate of tarnished silver.

But there is one thing that still moves. A figure, far across the uneven floor, slowly turning as if caught in an invisible current, its eyes wandering over the space around it. There is something so familiar about it, something in the posture or the movements or the _being_ , as if a piece of himself  he would always recognize is standing right across from him, a pale figure in a mirror, him and not him.

 _It’s Annatar._ The knowledge comes rushing up to him like the sensation of falling. His golden hair is made silver by the light, his usual robes of cream or sky exchanged for a funeral black. What awful force could have brought him here? Celebrimbor feels a sudden rush of panic, the need to sprint across the vast distances between them and grab Annatar’s arm, to take him out of this horrible place. He starts forward, hand raised in warning, and a faint cry falls from his lips into the echoing cavern around them.

The figure turns. And it’s not Annatar at all.

Even in the light which eats away at all color, Celebrimbor can see the flash of gold in his eyes. But it is the expression on the face, rather than its structure, which makes the difference clear. It is like staring into the mouth of a cave at dusk, seeing only a flat bulb of shadow but perceiving more—the rustling of shadows, the chittering of something awakening within, the swarm of dark shapes that will pour out in moments, seconds, as dense as a cloud of flies. The door clicks shut behind him, and suddenly there is no door—there never was. Not-Annatar smiles. A twitch in the darkness. Celebrimbor’s eyes move back to the walls, and at once their design is made clear to him.

Skulls stare out of every surface, clustered like pale maggots gleaming from the walls. There are enough here to belong to an entire army, ten armies. Their sockets stare out at each other across the vast, icy spaces, ringed by femurs and knucklebones arranged as intricately as a mosaic. And yet this is not art, not a tribute to the dead. This is desecration. Mockery.

Not-Annatar is watching him, drinking in his horror and disgust as if they are finely-savored things. He holds up something in his hand—he wants Celebrimbor to see. Without moving he is closer, being drawn forward against his will to see what Annatar is offering up, the empty eye sockets that suck him in and swallow him down with the soft ring of laughter echoing all around, burning eyes that pierce and blister and sear from the inside with the light, the awful _light_ —

 

 

 

Celebrimbor wakes. The terror of the dream flies out of him the moment he opens his eyes, and the motion of sitting bolt upright in bed is more out of habit; as if he is following the fear as it flies out of his chest, trying to pull it back to him. He stares out into the moon-tinged darkness. The curtains undulate as if underwater, caught in a warm breeze from the city drowned in sleep outside. The absence of fear has left him hollow, filled only with the echoing knowledge that something was going to happen, or was currently happening, or perhaps had happened long ago and could not be averted.

When the cool hand touches his shoulder he does not flinch, even though the touch seems like something reaching back for him out of the memory of that awful dream. When he looks down, in the darkness he can see two points of golden light—they waver for a moment as Annatar blinks off the remainder of sleep.

“Dream?” he whispers. Celebrimbor nods. “Would you like to talk about it?” Celebrimbor shakes his head. A flicker of disappointment flickers across Annatar’s face, but he hides it with a smile as he always does. Instead he pulls Celebrimbor down beside him again, shifting closer so they are pressed together, the heat from Annatar’s skin recalling dark tunnels, scraping footsteps. Celebrimbor shakes it off, forces himself to close the remaining distance and press his forehead to the hollow of Annatar’s throat. Already the dream is fading. He pushes it away faster, brushes its remainder from his mind. The weight and warmth before him is his anchor: _This is Annatar. He does not belong to your darkness_. Yes, that must have been it—the true meaning of the dream, which he was too wracked by fear to comprehend. Annatar could stand in the center of a cathedral of bones, and burn all the more brightly. Death could not touch him. An eerie portent, but not an evil one. Celebrimbor can see it now.  

“Close your eyes, Tyelpe,” Annatar murmurs against his hair. If he was more himself Celebrimbor might press a smile to Annatar’s throat, might murmur something teasing about Annatar giving him orders, might slip back into the comfort of a pleasant argument that night-shadows couldn’t touch. Instead, Celebrimbor simply obeys, letting the darkness be replaced by an even deeper one.

Once more he feels Annatar shift. His hand strokes over Celebrimbor’s cheek, brushing back his hair; and then, with an inevitability Celebrimbor cannot explain, the hand slides to cup the back of Celebrimbor’s head. There’s something so familiar about the gesture, so alarming that Celebrimbor’s eyes nearly fly open again. He can feel them resting against his scalp, lacing into his hair with a grip slightly firmer than Celebrimbor might have expected. “You’re safe,” Annatar whispers ( _lies, he is lying)_. The fingers press down, as if feeling the curve of bone beneath its thin layer of flesh and skin and hair. For a moment the darkness convulses—for a moment there is no warmth, and the shadows of the room flee outward, and full of thousands of eyeless faces. He can see Annatar lifting the skull once again, but it is not like the dream—this time Celebrimbor looks down with empty sockets, and Annatar meets his dead gaze with a look of quiet fondness.

Celebrimbor shivers. The moment passes. He can feel Annatar relaxing into sleep by the moment, slipping back into whatever dreams the Maia chooses to walk at night. Celebrimbor lies awake for longer—it seems that words hang in his mind that he cannot account for, as if there is still something he is missing.

_Three fires driven in your breast, the glory and light of Valinor…_

He does not know what they mean. But in the darkness with that quiet sense of dread lingering somewhere just out of reach, Celebrimbor begins to think: of the devices his hands could create, of preservation, protection, a light against the darkness. He almost awakens Annatar, almost whispers his budding plans into the Maia’s collarbones. Celebrimbor’s fingers trace them, sliding over the curve pushing out of the flesh. Bones without measure, and Annatar ( _Not-Annatar)_ rejoicing in them all. No, he will say nothing, not until the end. It will proof of Celebrimbor’s mastery, a pleasant surprise among friends. By then, this dream will be a foolish memory. He will reveal his works and Annatar will smile.

There would be three of them…


End file.
